ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at the ways in which LGBTQ activism is damaging to activists and activist movements. There is also a high degree of emotional taxation for those working on “loser issues” which has not been addressed by the literature. Some issues are harder than others, attract less funding, and put more of a strain on those activists working on them—these are loser issues. Things that mark the damage to LGBTQ activism are: (1) the staffing within the movements has been uneven through the HIV/AIDS political assassinations of the Reagan-Bush years, followed by low levels of funding and high burnout rates; (2) the difficulty of being an activist within a heteronormative sexual hierarchy. There is a reliance on a particular sexual hierarchy in the gay mainstream movement that preferences gay, white, young, masculine, cisgender males based on conventional sexual attraction within the staff, to donors and, to other target audiences (Capitol Hill, coalition stakeholders). This means increased structural levels of racism, sexist, transphobia, and ableism within both movements; (3) the literature on “impossible people” advanced by Dean Spade (2015) helps articulate the difficulty, particularly for trans and non-binary identities; and (4) the last issue is burnout where most staff in LGBTQ organizations do not stay for long which makes planning and strategy more short-term in focus in the face of long-term, systemic oppression. Part of this is also related to the nature of the non-profit industrial complex.
